During the drilling, completion, and production phases of wells for petroleum or water extraction, the downhole use of compositions having high viscosities is important for a wide variety of purposes. Higher viscosity fluids can more effectively carry materials to a desired location downhole, such as proppants. Similarly, higher viscosity drilling fluids can more effectively carry materials away from a drilling location downhole. The use of higher viscosity fluids during hydraulic fracturing generally results in larger more dominant fractures.
One common way to increase the viscosity of drilling fluids is to use a mixture of water and a viscosifying polymer, such as guar gum. However, the presence of certain ions in water can limit, reduce, or degrade the viscosity of certain polymers. This limits the use of certain ion-containing water, such as sea water, or water recovered from or naturally produced by some subterranean formations. As a result, the oil and gas industry spends substantial amounts of money and energy to obtain fresh water used for drilling fluid applications, such as for fracturing fluid, or avoids formations having substantial concentrations of particular ions which shrinks the value and size of the market and number of customers fracturing services can be provided.